Russia arrests hacker accused of preventing electronic voting during local election

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had detained a Moscow resident for conducting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks during local elections in September, targeting infrastructure in the capital and the Moscow region.

According to the agency’s press service, the 61-year-old suspect used Ukraine-made software to carry out the DDoS attacks on Russia’s critical information infrastructure. His activity coincided with the regional parliamentary and municipal elections.

The FSB reported that the hacker had installed Ukrainian software on his personal device and attacked, among others, the IP addresses of an internet provider in the Moscow region. The attack disrupted the provider’s systems, “preventing the company from providing internet access to customers and hindering voters from participating in remote electronic voting,” the agency said.

Russian law enforcement said they are currently working to identify the suspect’s accomplices. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison or be sentenced to forced labor, according to Russia’s criminal code.

The FSB has not disclosed which Ukrainian software the suspect used or whether he was affiliated with any hacker group. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, many pro-Ukraine hackers have developed their own DDoS toolkits, which they offer for free to anyone willing to target Russia. The attacks work by flooding targeted systems with junk traffic to make them temporarily unreachable. Read the full story.

Rajesh Dhawan

Rajesh Dhawan is a technology professional who loves to write about Cyber-security events and stories, Cloud computing and Microsoft technologies. He loves to break complex problems into manageable chunks of meaningful information.